Recently I asked a client, as I often do: How would you like your audience to feel?
He answered with a lengthy summary of all the points of his talk, then said, “Of course, they won’t remember everything.”
I asked again, “Okay, so putting the elements of your content aside, how do you want them to feel? What kind of experience are you hoping to create?”
He paused. Finally he said, “I want them to feel like they’re in the best possible place for them. I want them to feel like, of everywhere they could be in the world at that moment, they’re right where they should be.”
I love this!! This is a productive, deliberate intention. This can help him connect and warm the room.
A relentless focus on content comes at a cost. This man knew that the audience couldn’t possibly remember everything he said, and he told me he had had “a lot” of speaking training. Regardless, his top priority was the words he was going to say, not how he would connect with the people who had come to hear him.
We’re lucky if the audience remembers 30% of what we say. What we know, though, is that they’ll remember how we made them feel. It’s worth investing time and focus on exactly that outcome.
